Identifying and Advocating Best Practices in the Criminal Justice System. A Texas-Centric Examination of Current Conditions, Reform Initiatives, and Emerging Issues with a Special Emphasis on Capital Punishment.

Monday, 11 January 2010

In Louisiana

In 1987, eight men were electrocuted at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola within the span of eleven weeks, during a decade when 18 state inmates were executed for crimes they committed.

But
the past 10 years, have been quiet ones for Louisiana's death row, with
three inmates put to death by lethal injection. The most recent, Thursday's execution of Gerald Bordelon,
happened only because the convicted killer waived his appeals,
hastening his death by many years. His was the first execution since
2002, when Leslie Dale Martin was executed for the rape and murder of a
Lake Charles woman in 1981.

The dramatic decline in Louisiana executions since 1987, when the state
briefly led the nation in that statistic, comes at a time when,
nationally, both executions and the imposition of new death sentences
have waned significantly.

For victim's families, the long wait
between conviction and lethal injection -- during which inmates are
given several layers of appeals -- can be interminable, advocates say.
They question why the appeals process isn't in some way sped up: Texas,
after all, still executes convicts at a steady clip.

"It
shouldn't take them that long to decide whether somebody was really and
truly found guilty," said Beverly Siemssen, president of Victims and
Citizens Against Crime, pointing to cases that take more than decade to
wind through the appeals process. "That is a lot of time to put a
family through."

Lawyers for death row inmates counter that the
reversal rate for death sentences in Louisiana is significant,
underscoring the need for caution. Fifty percent of cases considered by
federal judges since 2000 have been sent back to the state court for
new trials, said Sarah Ottinger, executive director of the Capital Appeals Project.

The
advent of DNA technology, which has exposed wrongful convictions --
including many from death rows across the country -- has changed some
people's confidence in death penalty verdicts. Since 1989, seven men
have left Louisiana's death row as free men after they were exonerated
based on DNA and other evidence.A committee created by the Louisiana Supreme Court
last year plans to examine the entire process for post-conviction
appeals, both for defendants in capital cases and those serving other
prison sentences.

"There is an obvious concern with trying to
expedite the process, so that error can be identified as quickly as
possible," said Cheney Joseph, an LSU law professor who serves on the
panel. "If a conviction is a valid one, it will be affirmed and the law
would take its course."

And:

The change in the execution rate in Louisiana between the 1980s and now
is explained, in part, by the fact that more and better-financed
lawyers are handling the appeals process for these inmates, said Denny
LeBoeuf, an attorney who actively handled death row appeals in
Louisiana for many years.

"In the 1980s, we had no lawyers or
very few lawyers working with no resources or time," said LeBoeuf, who
is now the director of the ACLU's John Adams Project in New York.

Since
the United States reinstated the death penalty in 1976, Orleans Parish
juries have condemned 38 defendants to death. But a recent tally by
attorneys for death-row inmates calculated that courts have found
errors in 25 of those sentences, or nearly two-thirds. In some cases
defendants were retried, resulting in convictions on lesser charges,
while in others defendants were released.

Many of these
reversals occurred during "post-conviction" appeals, which typically
occur at least several years after conviction. The direct appeal,
during which lawyers can only challenge decisions made during the
trial, is the first level of review by the courts.

During the
post-conviction process, defense attorneys obtain the entire case file,
allowing them to see whether prosecutors or law enforcement withheld
any evidence that might have helped the defense. These files can be
voluminous, requiring thousands of hours to work through, said Gary
Clements, director of the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana.

The
less-thorough appeals process in Texas is one Louisiana shouldn't
strive to emulate, Clement said, pointing to the 2004 execution of a
man who forensic experts later concluded wasn't responsible for a house
fire that killed his three children.

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The StandDown Texas Project

The StandDown Texas Project was organized in 2000 to advocate a moratorium on executions and a state-sponsored review of Texas' application of the death penalty.
To stand down is to go off duty temporarily, especially to review safety procedures.

Steve Hall

Project Director Steve Hall was chief of staff to the Attorney General of Texas from 1983-1991; he was an administrator of the Texas Resource Center from 1993-1995. He has worked for the U.S. Congress and several Texas legislators. Hall is a former journalist.